Completely unrelated to your post, but I didn't want to create a whole
new thread just for this, so I shamelessly am putting this here... :)

  Yesterday at work we had a a concrete situation where Unix (in this
specific case MacOS X, or more precisely its "unixy" features) was just
way handier than Windows.

  A co-worker had filtered some data in a file through a program to a
second file, but was suspicious that the program might actually have some
bug in it. He was wondering how he could most easily see what the program
had removed from the input.

  Being used to unix, my very first instinct was to say "diff the files".

  "How do I do that?" Right, he was in Windows, and there's no diff in
Windows. We pondered for a moment what would be the easiest solution.
He was using notepad++ as his text editor and we wondered if there would
be some way of comparing two files in it. With the million of menus in the
program, it was probably not worth the trouble.

  I was on the Mac at the moment and said "just send the files to me and
I'll diff them here". He sent them and it took me something like 2 seconds
to write a "diff file1 file2 | less", and there the info we wanted was.

  Sometimes things just *are* way easier in unix. Sure, there are tools
for Windows to do the same thing, but the problem is that Windows never
has *any* tools by default, and it would always require quite a lot of
work to get the tools. In unix the tools just are there, period. No need
to think nor hassle around.

  (Ok, unix doesn't have all possible tools for all possible tasks by
default, but in some cases, like this one, it just works like a charm.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Sometimes things just *are* way easier in unix. Sure, there are tools
> for Windows to do the same thing, but the problem is that Windows never
> has *any* tools by default, and it would always require quite a lot of
> work to get the tools. In unix the tools just are there, period. No need
> to think nor hassle around.

Yeah, but MS gets slapped on the wrist for including things.  It's 
anticompetitive for the little guys that make stand-alone utilities.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Yeah, but MS gets slapped on the wrist for including things.  It's 
> anticompetitive for the little guys that make stand-alone utilities.

  Since when? Has someone complained eg. about the command prompt?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Yeah, but MS gets slapped on the wrist for including things.  It's 
>> anticompetitive for the little guys that make stand-alone utilities.
> 
>   Since when? Has someone complained eg. about the command prompt?

Not since the days of PC-DOS and DR-DOS, but look at Windows Media 
Player, Internet Explorer, the ability to read zip files without needing 
to buy WinZip, the ability to write data CDs from explorer...because MS 
has a majority market share, *any* feature they add stifles competitors 
trying to monetise the same feature in niche markets.  (Did I reach my 
buzzword quota?)

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Not since the days of PC-DOS and DR-DOS, but look at Windows Media 
> Player, Internet Explorer, the ability to read zip files without needing 
> to buy WinZip, the ability to write data CDs from explorer...because MS 
> has a majority market share, *any* feature they add stifles competitors 
> trying to monetise the same feature in niche markets.  (Did I reach my 
> buzzword quota?)

  I have never heard of those, but even if it's true, there's a sense of
irony in there. Microsoft itself is quite infamous for whining about why
Linux is "communism" and deteriorates good old capitalistic principles
where people should pay for what they use. (And all this because Linux
takes something like 2% of the market share in the OS market.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Tim Cook wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>>> Yeah, but MS gets slapped on the wrist for including things.  It's
>>> anticompetitive for the little guys that make stand-alone utilities.
>> 
>>   Since when? Has someone complained eg. about the command prompt?
> 
> Not since the days of PC-DOS and DR-DOS, but look at Windows Media
> Player, Internet Explorer, the ability to read zip files without needing
> to buy WinZip, the ability to write data CDs from explorer...because MS
> has a majority market share, *any* feature they add stifles competitors
> trying to monetise the same feature in niche markets.  (Did I reach my
> buzzword quota?)

Adobe didn't *let* Microsoft implement built-in PDF support, because they
feared Microsoft would Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish it.

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Adobe didn't *let* Microsoft implement built-in PDF support, because they
> feared Microsoft would Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish it.

  Some people ask why eg. Apple is allowed to include support for many
third-party programs and formats in their OS but Microsoft isn't.

  As you well put it, there's a good reason: When Apple adds support eg.
for a format in their OS, only few people care, and it has little impact
on anything. Apple can't afford *breaking* the format by making it
non-standard.

  Microsoft, however, having the de-facto monopoly status in computing,
can safely break the format's standard and implement their own extensions
and modifications, and this new format will quickly become the de-facto
standard, overriding the original. Not even big rich companies are safe
from this kind of tampering (just ask Sun Microsystems).

  It's no wonder so many companies don't have any problems in Apple
supporting their stuff, but cringe at the idea of Microsoft getting
their claws on it.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>  Not even big rich companies are safe
> from this kind of tampering (just ask Sun Microsystems).

Sun isn't a big rich company anymore, though :)

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Warp wrote:
>   "How do I do that?" Right, he was in Windows, and there's no diff in
> Windows. We pondered for a moment what would be the easiest solution.

Download diff for Windows? :-)

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=diff+win32

> He was using notepad++ as his text editor and we wondered if there would
> be some way of comparing two files in it. With the million of menus in the
> program, it was probably not worth the trouble.

It works with vim, tho. :-)

>   Sometimes things just *are* way easier in unix. Sure, there are tools
> for Windows to do the same thing, but the problem is that Windows never
> has *any* tools by default, and it would always require quite a lot of
> work to get the tools. In unix the tools just are there, period. No need
> to think nor hassle around.

No more hassle than starting up yast to download them, methinks. 
Occasionally you'll have to figure out if it's a "real" port or a cygwin 
port, but i've found the "win32" modifier almost always points you at a 
native port without a bunch of dependencies.

But sure, unix has more command-line tools for Windows by default. :-) 
Windows isn't primarily targeted at developers, so developers have to 
install some tools they need.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   "How do I do that?" Right, he was in Windows, and there's no diff in
> > Windows. We pondered for a moment what would be the easiest solution.

> Download diff for Windows? :-)

  That's precisely the problem I was talking about. *Nothing* comes with
Windows by default, and for everything you would have to search and download
some third-party, non-standard utility which might or might not do what you
want.

  (Additionally, Windows' command prompt just isn't as easy to use as
unix's. It's just a PitA to try to do anything in it.)

> > He was using notepad++ as his text editor and we wondered if there would
> > be some way of comparing two files in it. With the million of menus in the
> > program, it was probably not worth the trouble.

> It works with vim, tho. :-)

  Yeah, rather than take 2 seconds to diff the files in the mac computer,
he would have to spend at least 2 hours to find out how to do the same
thing in vim (and this after he had found and installed the program).

> >   Sometimes things just *are* way easier in unix. Sure, there are tools
> > for Windows to do the same thing, but the problem is that Windows never
> > has *any* tools by default, and it would always require quite a lot of
> > work to get the tools. In unix the tools just are there, period. No need
> > to think nor hassle around.

> No more hassle than starting up yast to download them, methinks. 

  I'm talking about a real, actual, concrete experience here, not some
theoretical "methinks" thing. Diffing the files on the mac was just way,
way less hassle than *anything* else.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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